Here’s the deal: FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed to Congress that the FBI is buying Americans’ location histories and other personal data straight from data brokers, sidestepping the warrant requirement entirely, while government requests for user data from Big Tech companies have surged 770% over the past decade. Meta and Google make nearly all their money off your data, and now the government just gets to “cut in line” and tap into that same pipeline instead of building its own surveillance system from scratch.

It’s not really a conspiracy theory at this point ; it’s a warrantless data-buying loophole hiding in plain sight, and there’s a rare bipartisan push in Congress right now trying to close it before Section 702 surveillance authority comes up for its next fight.